The cheeky (nay, artful) @goonerjamie tagged me with a meme on his blog, so I'm writing about a subject that's close to my heart. And my other organs. Yup, myself. I could pretend this is a difficult subject, that I'm some kind of peculiar enigma. I might wish to consider myself a shadowy, mysterious creature - but nothing could be further from the truth. However, putting all these answers together in one clump seems a wonderful idea. I'll also be passing the tag along to five more people in time-honored meme tradition... it does seem a nice way to get to know folks better. And remember, everyone's an expert on at least one subject - themselves - so it should lead to some very enlightening reading! Anyway, enough fluff, on with the questions. Rules and tags at the bottom!
What are your current obsessions? Oooh. Couldn't say. She might file a restraining order.
Seriously, my big thing right now might seem like something of a mid-life crisis, but I'm currently running around like crazy obsessed with doing (or attempting to do) a few things I've let slide lately, particularly while the kids were little. Mainly they're creative things, the sort of thing that you shelve to do "when you have the time" and, of course, you never do. My current obsessions are to make the time - I want to write (blogging, perhaps fiction), start performing music again (it's been something like 17 years - and let's just say recording my own voice again has been something of an eye-opener), I'm starting to get right into this whole Twitter business, and of course I want to get this guest blogging gig off the ground.
What item from your wardrobe do you most wear? In public, at least, anything yellow. I just plain love yellow. Not a very manly color, I realize, but it works for me - it's one of those colors that instantly takes about twenty years off me and makes me run around like a kid. When I get home though, first thing I do is get out of my work clothes and throw my sleepy pants on. I have quite a wild assortment of them - Coca-Cola polar bears, Stewie Griffin, lots of Mario. The neighbors are familiar (but hopefully not too unnerved) to see me walking the dog late at night in Mario Kart pyjama bottoms with "Chicks Dig The Ride" all over them.
Last thing you bought? A digital voice recorder. Well, it was bought for me as a present from the kids, so it works out in the end I bought it for myself anyway. Won't go anywhere without it, and constantly taking notes with it, blog ideas, things that won't fit in a tweet, grabbing soundbites of things that I consider funny, and practising my singing with it whenever I get the chance.
What are you listening to? Currently on a voyage of rediscovery looking for several obscure eighties acts that I think never got the exposure they deserved. I'm looking for songs to perform and cover myself. Right now I'm listening to Perhaps by The Associates, Billy Mackenzie has a voice that borders on uneartly in this one. Breakfast is one of the most amazing art-rock recordings of all time. An incredible talent.
Fave holiday spots. I'll be honest. I've disliked holidays lately (or vacations, as these colonial folk call them). It's not so much the holiday, it's the fact of being locked up in a tin box on four wheels and traveling an outrageous distance. With little kids, the target is unquestionably Disneyworld, and I don't handle Florida well. Kentucky is yucky, but Florida is horrider. it's always the British holidays, which I was younger, colored by nostalgia, that I look back upon most fondly. Childhood memories of camping in wet and windy Wales, meeting my first love in the neighboring caravan on a camp site in North Devon, and a wonderful New Year's celebration in the Lake District after graduation. Now the kids are older, chances are I will be going back to relive those.
What are you reading? Currently reading Larry Lessig's Remix about what the Internet and new technologies are doing for creativity, and how copyright laws are stifling it. I love Lessig's writing - his presentation style is also jaw-dropping - and generally agree with many of the things he has to say. All this new "stuff" means we ought to be on the verge of exciting times. I'm reading Rudy Rucker's Postsingular, although I must admit cyberpunk science-fiction isn't really my thing, and I keep going back and re-reading the David Hewson Nic Costa novels - mystery novels are I suppose my thing. Honestly can't beat a good Agatha Christie, ever.
4 words to describe you? Cheeky, geeky, open-minded (does that count as one?), mischievous. (Very).
Guilty pleasures. Well there was that time when... oh wait, I don't think that's what the question was after.
- Catherine Tate. Honestly, don't get me started on this lady. Funny. Curvy. Redhead. That's surely as close to perfect as you'd ever find. You honestly can't ask for more than that. Probably the best thing that happened to Doctor Who in over 45 years.
- Nintendo DS. Never leave home without it. An ideal public restroom activity.
- Twitter. Yes, I call this one a guilty pleasure, simply because I actively refuse to be on my best behavior there, and I have to clandestinely scurry away to be on it. If I was around on Twitter more often there'd be hell to pay.
- Romance movies with time travel in them. I absolutely blub through Somewhere In Time and The Love Letter. Available in all good Hallmark stores worldwide!
If you were a god/goddess who would you be? Tricky one this. Always been very fond of the Norse myths and legends, and the Icelandic sagas (I guess there's some of it in my genetic material), sometimes I feel a bit like Loki I guess. You've got to have a trickster around there somewhere - it's an important way of keeping the balance, and keeping folks on their toes, which I like to think is what I'm good at. I'm not averse to rocking the boat or applying some shock tactics, and I must admit I enjoy it. (Hence mischievous, above). It's a close fit, but not perfect. For instance, I've never shape-shifted to a mare to seduce a horse. Honest.
If I stretched the definition of "god" a little bit, I could probably claim John Belushi. Except I'm slightly taller than him. *Very* slightly.
Who/what makes you laugh until you are weak? Good quality British comedy. No, not the sitcom junk they used to put on ITV - the good stuff they'd hide out on BBC2, maybe even Channel 4 eventually. Fawlty Towers, The Hitch-hikers Guide To The Galaxy, Red Dwarf. I guess there's something in all of these I identify with. You can't help but sympathise with Basil Fawlty. Oh, and before anyone asks, yes, I am British, and no, I don't care much for Monty Python.
Fave spring thing to do. This is the easiest question so far. I love going ouside and standing in the rain, maybe even stomp in a puddle, thunderstorms are even better - makes me feel young and very ionized, and has a wonderful effect on my physiology and my mood. If you catch me after I've been out in a thunderstorm, I'm fully charged and can be a complete pain in the hind end.
When you die what would you like people to say about you at your funeral? "Inconsiderate bastard. He should have died on Monday. Doesn't he realize Tuesday is trash pick-up night?"
Best thing you ate or drank lately? This sounds really stupid (and perhaps even a bit creepy), but I was in the store the other day and saw kippers in a tin, and realized I hadn't eaten a kipper - good breakfast stuff from my previous life, that - for what must have been about twenty years. I just had to have this kipper in a tin. Got it home, opened it right there and then, before I'd even put the rest of the groceries away, and ate it straight out of the tin. It was absolutely, positively, gorgeous. Almost mystical in it's oily goodness. I wanted another one after that, but I had to settle for a snack pack chocolate pudding.
I regretted it later though. Must have been bad pudding. Been wandering around taunting my son with "Smoke me a kipper. I'll be back for breakfast" ever since.
When did you last go for night out? With all the running about I've been doing lately, the last night out was when we went down The Pub. Paid the kids off and sent them down the movies to keep them occupied and out of the way for a few hours. I had a bit of a skinful and refused to behave myself, was a menace to bar staff, picked ourselves up a few movies and made a night of the whole thing. I regretted it a little bit the next day. But only a little bit.
Fave film ever. Saw this again the other day. North By Northwest. Cary Grant is quite simply the man in this movie who women want and men want to be, and he comes out with so many lines that I just wish I'd said.
Share some wisdom. When you empty the dishwashing water, there's always a teaspoon left in the bottom of the sink. (Think about that one. It applies to much more than just washing dishes).
Song you can't get out of your head. Easy. Tempted, by Squeeze. Usually it's my guilty conscience showing through when I'm in one of my more flirty moods. (Like after I've just been standing out in the rain). OK, I'll be honest, it's what I'm working on right now.
Thing you are looking forward to. That well-endowed redhead nurse I've been promised when I'm older and incapable of looking after myself. I'm trying to get an advance on this one, I'm "older" now, and I sure need some looking after.
If you could change one detail from your past, what would that be? Funnily enough, I've been thinking about this The Butterfly Effect question a lot recently - I had an idea for a short story about it, and I also was thinking that, you know, I've had a pretty decent and strangely-eventful life which would at least make a decent blog post, if not a darn good movie. I also have my share of run-ins with coincidences, synchronicity, and so on - everybody does, that's part of being human. One event that sticks in my mind is the end of a disastrous relationship, after which I did what any sane man would do, went back to wandering round my previous haunts and looking for old flames. It turned into a peculiar experience. With the benefit of hindsight and years of extra wisdom, again and again I met old girl-friends (with a hyphen as in "friends who are girls") and we found that, "yes, you know, we would have gone well together.." or, "if only this had or hadn't happened...", or, "I didn't realize you were serious about me", or, "You're perfect. Well, except for the soccer team you support" (which, of course, is insurmountable). Every one of these relationships-that-never-was would have meant things could have turned out very differently.
But the important part is "never was". None of this ever happened. The reality I'm in is the only reality there is, and the best reality there possibly could be. I've no regrets and I'm bloody pleased with the way I turned out, and my kids, and everything else.
What's your life philosophy? This is my replacement question - the one about the most fun I've ever had under the influence of alcohol would probably violate Posterous' Terms of Service.
Too many people claim The Golden Rule ("do unto others" etc) as some kind of life philosophy, but I must admit, it's full of imperfections. It's warm and fuzzy, and it gives this impression that, somehow, we can all get along simply by being nice. The truth is, I don't tolerate hypocrisy lightly. Don't act a certain way, if that certain way isn't really you. I'd much rather have people be true to themselves. For good or for bad, that's exactly what I try to do. If I'm rude, crass, insensitive, self-absorbed or just plain weird, better you find that out sooner rather than later. No point winning friends by being someone you're not. They'll find you out in the end.
My favorite example of this is the big lie. You've seen it. There's a middle-aged married couple in a restaurant, and Abner's eyes are wandering, when Ethel catches him and says "You were looking at that girl, weren't you?", at which point Abner tries to blatantly lie his way out of it. That's always struck me as a refusal to accept exactly who we are, what we are, where thousands of years of evolutionary psychology have got us. I hadn't been married 24 hours before this situation came up for me; fortunately we knew each other well enough at that point that I could comfortably tell the truth about how great I thought the lady's particular assets were, and my new bride was pleased that she'd at last found an honest man. I'm just a simple man who knows what he likes. There should never be a need to lie about that.
Tag! You're it..... Meme rules: remove one question and replace with one of your own. And my unwilling victims are...
Some of you are bloggers, I know, so this should be easy... for those of you who aren't, why not go ahead and post yours here! Just post your answers in an email and I'll handle the rest!
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